Thermionic charge transport in CMOS nano-transistors

We report on DC and microwave electrical transport measurements in silicon-on-insulator CMOS nano-transistors at low and room temperature. At low source-drain voltage, the DC current and RF response show signs of conductance quantization. We attribute this to Coulomb blockade resulting from barriers formed at the spacer-gate interfaces. We show that at high bias transport occurs thermionically over the highest barrier: Transconductance traces obtained from microwave scattering-parameter measurements at liquid helium and room temperature is accurately fitted by a thermionic model. From the fits we deduce the ratio of gate capacitance and quantum capacitance, as well as the electron temperature

A corner reflector of graphene Dirac fermions as a phonon-scattering sensor

Dirac fermion optics exploits the refraction of chiral fermions across optics-inspired Klein-tunneling barriers defined by high-transparency p-n junctions. We consider the corner reflector (CR) geometry introduced in optics or radars. We fabricate Dirac fermion CRs using bottom-gate-defined barriers in hBN-encapsulated graphene. By suppressing transmission upon multiple internal reflections, CRs are sensitive to minute phonon scattering rates. We report on doping-independent CR transmission in quantitative agreement with a simple scattering model including thermal phonon scattering. As a new signature of CRs, we observe Fabry-P\'erot oscillations at low temperature, consistent with single-path reflections. Finally, we demonstrate high-frequency operation which promotes CRs as fast phonon detectors. Our work establishes the relevance of Dirac fermion optics in graphene and opens a route for its implementation in topological Dirac matter.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Contact gating at GHz frequency in graphene

International audienceThe paradigm of graphene transistors is based on the gate modulation of the channel carrier density by means of a local channel gate. This standard architecture is subject to the scaling limit of the channel length and further restrictions due to access and contact resistances impeding the device performance. We propose a novel design, overcoming these issues by implementing additional local gates underneath the contact region which allow a full control of the Klein barrier taking place at the contact edge. In particular, our work demonstrates the GHz operation of transistors driven by independent contact gates. We benchmark the standard channel and novel contact gating and report for the later dynamical transconductance levels at the state of the art. Our finding may find applications in electronics and optoelectronics whenever there is need to control independently the Fermi level and the electrostatic potential of electronic sources or to get rid of cumbersome local channel gates

Graphene nanotransistors for RF charge detection

We have studied the static and dynamical properties of a graphene microwave nanotransistor to be used as sensitive fast charge detectors. The channel consists of exfoliated graphene on SiO2 with a 120 nm long, 900-1500 nm wide top-gate deposited on 5 nm AlOx dielectric. The scattering parameters were measured up to 60 GHz from which we deduce the gate capacitance, the drain conductance and the transconductance as a function of gate voltage. The broad measuring band allows us to measure the current gain and to map its full spectrum so as to extract reliable values of the transit frequency fT. From these measurements, we could estimate the carrier mobility, the doping of the access leads, the gate capacitance and the transconductance. The transconductance per unit width and bias voltage is larger than 1mSμm−1 V−1 which compares with the performance of high electron mobility transistors. High-frequency characterization is achieved using microwave probe stations. Finally, using recent noise thermometry measurements, we estimate the charge resolution of graphene nanotransistors